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Some were paid. Some felt compelled by a duty to God. Some volunteered. Some died doing it. All flew on rickety old aircraft into a nighttime, wartime patch of African forest called Biafra.

Far Away in the Sky gives the personal account of one of them, a young American volunteer who joined the largest international humanitarian relief airlift ever attempted. In 1968 millions of people, mostly children, were starving due to a military blockade of Biafra, the former Eastern Region of Nigeria. The World Council of Churches and Caritas International mounted a relief airlift. Flying at night to avoid Nigerian Migs, without radar or any modern navigational aids, landing amid bombs on a stretch of road in the rain forest, the old planes delivered thousands of tons of food and medicines.

UNICEF recruited six former United States Peace Corps Volunteers, including the author, to help unload the planes. The former volunteers had served in Nigeria and were familiar with the area and the people. To David Koren the people of Biafra, his former students and fellow teachers, constituted his motive for joining the airlift.

More than just a memoir of events, Far Away in the Sky promotes a discussion of international aid, of the balance between the grace of giving and the dignity of receiving aid, and the policies of governments toward intervention or non-intervention in humanitarian disasters. How do the lessons of Biafra apply to modern eruptions like Rwanda, Darfur, Libya, Syria and those yet to come?

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Koren lives on a mini farm in the Pennsylvania countryside with his wife, Kay, and their two tractors. He has enjoyed careers in teaching, rehabilitation counseling, laser physics, amateur astronomy, and now book writing. Beautiful in aspect and spirit, Kay abides all the puddles he gets himself into.

More About the Author

My mother told me to write this book. She is 95 years old, and she handed me a bundle of letters that I had sent her from Africa 50 years ago. She said, "You write very well, and you need to tell this story." I served in the United States Peace Corps in Nigeria in 1964, 1965, and 1966, and I wrote home about it. Since we had no instantaneous electronic communications back then, letters contained a lot of detail and feeling.

In 1968 I went back there to my one-time home in Eastern Nigeria-then called Biafra-because a war had broken out. People were starving by the millions. International church groups started a massive humanitarian airlift of food and medicine. UNICEF recruited me to help unload the planes in Biafra. Again, I wrote letters home, but I also made dozens of audio tapes with amazing detail, capturing the history of that time.

I still have the tapes and the letters my mother gave me and my pictures and many documents from the airlift. From them I wrote the book, "Far Away in the Sky."

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Pogrom victims face the ultimate dilemma: Should they die fighting for their lives? Or should they beg for mercy and hope that determined killers would have a change of heart?

Dealing with a choice this excruciating is bad enough, but it doesn't end there. There's also the frustration, even anger, that pogrom survivors must face when people who have never walked in their shoes pontificate on how they (and by implication the victims who didn't survive) should have reacted while being hunted down for elimination.

Many ask: How could they have walked so meekly to their deaths? Why didn't they fight for their lives? Or: What made them think they had any chance against such powerful enemies? Couldn't they see that resistance was futile? It's easy for historians or anyone else (especially those who have never directly witnessed a pogrom, let alone come close to being at the receiving end of one) to hold facile debates from very safe, comfortable locations about pogrom victims.

David Koren does not default to this familiar trait in his book, Far Away in the Sky: A Memoir of the Biafran Airlift. Instead, he offers uncommon insight and empathy on the situation that faced the people of Nigeria's Eastern Region just before they tried to break away as the Republic of Biafra in 1967. This secession attempt came after two rounds of pogroms in which tens of thousands of eastern Nigerians were killed in 1966. It helps that Koren actually lived in the Eastern Region for three years before the Nigeria-Biafra War broke out in July 1967. As a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in a secondary school in the region, he had come to understand the place and its ethnic-majority Igbo people better than most Americans ever could.Read more ›

My brother has written an honest and insightful account of his Peace Corp experience in Nigeria and of his harrowing experiences after returning to aid in the Biafran airlift. He uses words beautifully to give the reader a real sense of people and place both before and during the war.His book tells a fascinating story of all the players and circumstances that came together to create this relief effort and how it changed his life and the lives of so many others.This story has relevance to many events happening today. I loved getting to know my brother better.

Mr. Koren presents a well-written, first-hand look at the conflict in Nigeria during the late 1960s. The book will be of interest to library lovers, UNICEF supporters, and those wishing to understand more about the humanitarian efforts put forth in Biafra.

After the Peace Corps had to leave Nigeria because the Biafran Civil War started, Koren returned to help unload planes that aid agencies were flying food in because the Biafrans (Igbos) were surrounded and being starved to death. Koren trained for the Peace Corps at the same place I did (UCLA), arrived just as I was due to leave, and in telling about his Peace Corps experience, mentions one woman who was in my training group. From my travels in what was then the Eastern Region of Nigeria (I was in the North), I could identify many of the towns and also his experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He wrote a shorter version about his experience and Peace Corps alums told him he needed to expand it into a book. He discovered some tapes he had done during his time working on the airlift so he was able to develop it into a book I am find fascinating as well as tragic. The Igbos/Biafrans later had to surrender. Oil in the southern part of the Eastern region, and religious differences between Muslims and Christians contributed to the civil war and are still the sources of big problems today.

Koren takes a job offered by UNICEF (offered because of his previous experience in the East as a PCVolunteer) unloading planes at the Biafran runway at Uli, a section of highway that only operates after dark with a single radio beacon and with the lights turned on just as the plane lands so it will not be spotted and bombed by the Nigerian air force. Koren's role is to oversee unloading the planes as fast as possible so they can take off and do one or two more trips before daylight. He is working with the World Council of Churches and Roman Catholic Caritas bringing in food aid because Biafra is surrounded and the people are starving. Other planes from other locations are bringing in weapons, etc.Read more ›

This book is reasonably well written and of particular interest to me as I was stationed at an Agricultural Research and Training Station near Umaihia from July of 1965 through June of 1967. While traveling by road to all four regions of the country during this period I witnessed many of the preparations for the war. After leaving the country we received very little information on just how the Biafrans were able to hold out as long as they did, i.e. how they were supplied, who paid for the supplies etc. This book was very helpful in filling in these gaps in my understanding of what actually happened.

While I realize that the number of potential buyers who actually witnessed the birth of this short lived nation is very small and is diminishing almost daily, it is still a very gripping tale of the the determination and courage of the Igbo people in their struggle for a nation of their own. One question particularly bothers me. Koren seems to indicate that there were minimal reprisals against the Igbo people after the war. This seems to be inconsistent with the memories of Chinua Achebe in his recent memoir